I'm a macOS user but would be interested in getting a linux desktop, I've heard Linux Mint or PopOS are pretty good just from a ease of use perspective? I've used Ubuntu in the past and had all sorts of display graphics driver problems.
I know it's an impossible question, but nonetheless, what's the best distro to use for someone who just wants a useable desktop?
I think a lot of stock gets put into distros for driver issues, but a huge factor is the hardware you're running on.
Some distros like popOS intentially bundle drivers for newer graphics cards and the like, but that aside, if you don't have really hardcore requirements, picking decent hardware that's a few years old will probably smooth out your journey a lot, regardless of which distro you pick.
If you're coming from macOS you might be happy to pay a premium for a purpose built machine as well (I have a System 76 laptop which has served me really well for a good 5 years or so now with no sign of slowing down)
As an aside, Linux Mint, PopOS and Ubuntu (the three you mentioned) are all great choices for a reliable, stable desktop.
I’ve been daily driving popos for about 5 years. I’m not an admin by any stretch and it’s worked great. Upgrades and everything mostly flawless. I came from a 13” MacBook Pro (2015), it took a little adjustment but it’s been great overall. The good thing about POP is that we’ve found ububtu software works on it.
We ended up installing popos on our work Linux (Ubuntu)dell because we had trouble installing the nvidia drivers for the card we got.
I had one hiccup 4 years ago where it wouldn’t upgrade to the next version because I did some out of band install. (It was a usb to hdmi adapter…)
It was a little to get it sorted but I never ended up with a unbootable system..
I ended up moving to Linux Mint in 2018, as I need a new laptop and was annoyed that the current generation of Mac laptops didn't come with any USB ports. It's been my daily driver since, and I've been pretty happy with it in general.
You should be able to try either distro with a live usb which will give you an indication if anything will break immediately on your system.
I never had any trouble using Ubuntu, but I tried Mint for a project (I needed to import video over Firewire, and apparently, the kernel support for this has been removed) and Mint worked great for this project. I was so impressed I kept Mint installed because everything just worked.
Fedora strikes a good balance between stability and being up-to-date and secure.
It's also the recommended distribution by Privacy Guides:
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop/
I really, really want to migrate from macOS to Fedora on my M1 MBA but Asahi isn't completely there yet.
Depends on your experience level and willingness to tinker. The bad news is that in my experience, you always end up opening a terminal and fiddling with configuration files no matter what distribution you use. The good news is that if you are OK doing that, you don't actually need that much from your distribution other than the useful trick of keeping itself up to date.
Ubuntu is alright. But you trade off up to date software for stability. And the bi-annual upgrades to the latest LTS are a bit of a PITA and don't always go that smoothly. And you end up running older kernel and whatever else was current around the time they freeze their LTS version. So, for something that is supposed to be user friendly and stable, it actually ends up having a lot of issues and not being all that stable over time.
If you want to get the best possible experience with graphics, you basically need the latest kernels, drivers, fixes, etc. as soon as they get released. Ubuntu doesn't deliver that because you get stuck on either the yearly or LTS release.
These days I prefer rolling release style distributions. It's just less hassle in the end and not really less stable for me. The opposite actually in my experience. You could go with Debian testing, fedora, and a few other options. But I ended up using Manjaro which is based on arch linux. My reason is simple: the SteamDeck uses a distribution that is based on arch linux. I wanted to run steam on my laptop. So, I figured that using what Valve themselves seem to actively support and invest in makes a whole lot of sense. I've not been disappointed with this so far (three years and counting).
Installing games is easy. Getting things like Gnome, Steam, etc installed via pac is easy. And I can install whatever via snap, flatpak, or native arch packages. More importantly, everything stays up to date and fresh. After three years I have no need to reinstall my laptop because it's fine. Every once in a while I need to deal with some minor issues after some update for which the solution usually is a Google search away. But other than that, Manjaro has been rock solid for me. And besides, I've never used a Linux distribution in 30 years that didn't have that issue.
I was looking around a while last year and those two are the exact ones I landed on, with a slight lean towards Pop!_OS due to the team behind it striving for maximum "out-of-the-box" usability.
Linux Mint has a special place in my heart as it was the first distro I used back in my high school computer science class and it holds up exceptionally well today. It's also community driven compared to Pop!_OS which is developed by System76.
> I've used Ubuntu in the past and had all sorts of display graphics driver problems.
Were you by any chance using Nvidia graphics hardware?
If you play games, you'll likely have the best overall experience with AMD graphics. (Assuming the GPU model isn't too new; it can take some months for the drivers to catch up to new models.) Most desktop distros will have everything you need; no need to go downloading drivers from vendors or turning to third party software repositories.
If you don't play games, either AMD or Intel graphics ought to be good.
Nvidia drivers can be made to work well with most games, and certain distros make the setup easy, but they come with baggage and hassles. They're huge, and they have a long history of integrating poorly with the OS overall. The problems they caused me outside of games were part of what drove me to stop buying their hardware.
Get a cheap used laptop for ~$300 and run linux on it, you will be surprised at how much value you can’t get out of that. I use it as a dev machine, although I only do embedded work and some web work on it. I still drive with my Mac, but I use the linux laptop over tigervnc and it work fine over ethernet. I would suggest looking at pop_os or mint. Both are stable LTS users but do seem to keep up with drivers and kernels reasonably close to “newish”
I know it's an impossible question, but nonetheless, what's the best distro to use for someone who just wants a useable desktop?